Archive for December, 2024
Song of the Day 12/27: The Four Seasons, “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)”
I always found this song’s opening line a bit strange. “Oh, what a night, late December, 1963.” Considering that “late December” is already filled with several significant calendar items, like “Christmas Eve,” “Christmas” and “New Year’s Eve,” not to mention the winter solstice, it seems odd that the singer can’t put a specific date on […]
DL Open Thread: Friday, December 27, 2024
How Cops Routinely Mistreat Our Most Vulnerable: The Biden administration launched the probes in the wake of the national outcry over the police killings in 2020 of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. Reports issued over the last two years have focused largely on excessive use force and the kind of racial […]
‘Bulo’s Fave Tunes: #’s 40-31
For the sake of pseudo-transparency, I don’t really agonize whether, say, Song #37 is ‘better’ than Song #36. I find ten songs that I think roughly belong where they are and, yes, I do program them a bit so that we don’t have three ‘similar’ artists go back to back to back. Just more info […]
DL Open Thread: Thursday, December 26, 2024
Let’s get this out of the way first: Wednesday NFL football is bad NFL football. At least Beyonce was there to save halftime. Israel: Fuck The Civilians. And you believed them when they said that they weren’t targeting civilians: At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed […]
‘Bulo’s Fave Tunes Of 2024: #’s 50-41
OK, kids, here we go. Real happy with the songs I unearthed this year. I notice that the selection is perhaps a bit more roots-oriented than usual. Although it’s technically my list, I solicit input from my wife, my daughters, my son-in-law and, this year, our very own Nathan Arizona. Oh, did I mention that […]
Song of the Day 12/25: The Band, “Christmas Must Be Tonight”
H/t El Somnambulo, who suggested this for the Christmas playlist back in March. This Christmas song by Robbie Robertson went overlooked for years. Written and rejected for the Band’s 1975’s “Northern Lights – Southern Cross” album, it didn’t see release until 1977 on their final, contract-fulfilling LP “Islands,” a grab-bag of covers and tracks cut […]
DL Open Thread: Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Been a tough month for those born on December 25. Rickey Henderson. Justin Trudeau. December boys got it bad: Hey, it’s December 25. Howzabout a double shot?: This is what we in the Open Thread biz refer to as ‘vamping’. Ho-kay, let’s see if I can dig up some, you know, real stuff… Yikes, America’s […]
Song of the Day 12/24: McCoy Tyner, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
If you like holiday music played by jazzmen, you’ve probably heard this on Columbia’s 1981 Christmas sampler, “God Rest Ye Merry, Jazzmen,” because there aren’t all that many jazz Christmas collections out there. That album also includes Dexter Gordon’s extended “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and Wynton Marsalis’ deconstruction of “We Three Kings of […]
DL Open Thread: Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Just because we don’t get nearly as many readers the next two days as normal, that’s no excuse for me to just mail in the Open Thread. If you’re gonna read, I’m gonna try. Let’s start with ‘salacious’: Well She Was Just Seventeen, You Know What I Mean: Citing text messages, travel receipts, online payments […]
Song of the Day 12/23: The Carpenters, “Merry Christmas Darling”
As Nathan Arizona noted the other day, Karen Carpenter could make even a happy holiday song sound a little sad, so a song about missing her beau on Christmas Eve is right in her sweet spot. This song topped Billboard’s Christmas singles chart for three years in the early ’70s, and it was re-released this […]
DL Open Thread: Monday, December 23, 2024
Biden Commutes Sentences Of Death Row Inmates: President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Donald J. Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Those affected by Mr. Biden’s action, all […]
DL’s MVP’s (Most Valuable To The Progressive Cause) Of 2024
I must first explain the omission of both Sarah McBride and Kyle Evans Gay from this year’s list. Yes, I’m thrilled that both have moved on to higher office. Yes, their legislative work deserves recognition on this list. The only reason I’ve left them off is, through no fault of their own, the State Senate […]
Song of the Day 12/22: Andy Williams, “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
This song, which debuted in 1963, turns up among Billboard’s top 10 holiday songs every year, and I’d argue it owes its popularity to a TV commercial that wasn’t about Christmas at all. At one point in the 1970s Andy Williams was known as “Mr. Christmas,” for good reason. He hosted a holiday version of […]
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